As confident as I am on how good the Alage Mower is in treating hair algae as well as using it as a general tank cleaning tool for your aquarium, I still eager to see how other people think of it!

Last weekend, I took a few units and went on a tour to several elite aquarium stores around LA.

Vivid Aquarium

Dave, the owner, knew immediately what this tool might mean to him and went straight to the outlet of a pump in the Aussie scoly scolymia coral dominated tank. It took just 30 seconds for him to remove all the hair algae there.

Then he went to his frag tank with plastic eggcrate grid plate that holds many coral frags. There, quite a bit of hair algae around and in lots of grid holes. Again, one by one he cleaned them all.

While cleaning, he said "If the Algae Mower is a little bit more powerful, you are going to get many people to use it". Although the Algae Mower is operated by a 9V battery, I expect it to be quite adequate for general aquarium keepers. But for Dave, he needs to run it with an AC/DC adapter to provide more power and continuous operation without worrying about running out of battery!

Considering his comment and the fact that battery nowadays is pretty expensive, I now decide that every Algae Mower will come with an UL approved, light weight electronic 100 ~ 240 V AC / +12V DC adapter for every Algae Mower buyer. Now, you can choose to operate the Alage Mower with a safe and low voltage (+12VDC) power cord if battery is not availabe.

Aquarium City

Julian, the owner, was very excited after I removed some of the hair algae hiding in a tough to get to area in his beautiful main aquarium. He said that he had seen pumps with suction inlet for cleaning gravel, but never saw something like the Algae Mower that is so flexible, small, adjustable lengh from 1 foot, 2-foot and 3-foot long that has a stainless steel drill bit for ultimate cleaning of tough and sticky stuffs like hair algae, coral slime, detritus ...

Underwater Aquarium

Chris, the owner didn't wait for my explanation on what it could do and immediately stuck the Algae Mower into the gravel sand in one of his freshwater aquarium! Of course, all the sand was sucked into the pump and jammed the impeller! He apologized that he had damaged my sample unit. I said, "don't worry, things like that can happen to other users too". I used the screw driver that came with every Algae Mower to open up the 4 screws that held the water inlet plate to clean out the sand, the Algae Mower was fully operational again.

Chris has a 200 gallons newly set up display fish and coral tank that contains quite a bit of slimmy algae and dirt on the back wall and rocks. At first, he said no no for using the Algae Mower on that tank, but because he thought he had screwed up my sample, so he said okay to try it there. He and his emplyoees were so amazed that Algae Mower could remove all the algae / slime from a 2' x 2' area in less that I minute. He was convinced that this tool can be useful for maintaining his customers' tanks too.

Mark's Fish Store

I knew Mark when I was a member of the MASLA (Marine Society Saltwater LA) club 10 years ago. He is usually a tough sell person. As expected, he said that this gadget is so high tech that he doesn't think he can sell it. I told him that I saw some hair algae in his freshwater Discus display tank that I could demo to him. Half reluctantly, he brought the ladder for me to access and try it there. Per his directions, I took out not just the long hair algae but a lot of the short ones (0.1") on the drift wood too!

After this successful demo, he used it himself to remove some hair algae grown on one of the brain corals in his saltwater tank. He still said he didn't know whether he could sell this or not!

Anyway, all four stores ended up buying one for their own use and as a show-and-tell unit to their customers. :)

I am an electrical engineer. Fish keeping has been my hobby since I was 4 years old. I owe it to the living organisms that I have kept all these years for giving me another dimension of life where I can be totally at peace and escape from the pressure and issues in the real life. I do whatever it takes to provide the cleanest environment for them to thrive.